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America in Vietnam: The communists drew first blood 50 years

 
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LewWaters
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Joined: 18 May 2004
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Location: Washington State
PostPosted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:55 am    Post subject: America in Vietnam: The communists drew first blood 50 years Reply with quote
From the July 8, 2009 Washington Times Editorial

Quote:
The communists drew first blood 50 years ago

By | Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Few Americans have heard of Bien Hoa, but the Vietnam War started there 50 years ago today. At the time, 1,500 Americans were in South Vietnam, 300 of whom were military advisers. North Vietnam's communist leadership decided it was time to bring the Americans into their ongoing conflict with Saigon. Viet Cong planners targeted the Green House, the American advisers' residence at Bien Hoa. The attack was planned to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the administration of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

At 7 p.m. on July 8, 1959, six Viet Cong guerrillas infiltrated the post wearing South Vietnamese uniforms, taking advantage of lax security during off-duty hours. It was movie night, and the lower floor of the Green House was dark. Six of the eight Americans based there were watching the 1957 drama "The Tattered Dress." The other two were playing tennis. Four enemy troops took positions near the windows looking into the large main room, while two others snuck into the kitchen through a back door. One of them, Nguyen Van Hue, carried a half-kilogram bomb made from two milk cans welded together.

<<snip>>

Bien Hoa was a minor engagement in a faraway land. Americans had been killed in Vietnam before that attack, but from the enemy's point of view, Bien Hoa was the watershed, the declaration of war. The conflict would last 16 more years and take more than 58,000 American lives, a tragic sacrifice in a war that could have been won but wasn't.

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TEWSPilot
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Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 1235
Location: Kansas (Transplanted Texan)
PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
But this doesn't fit Obama's "World Apology Tour" narrative of an evil United States trumping up some "phony" Bay of Tonkin incident to wage war on the peaceful, unsuspecting North Vietnamese who just wanted to reunite the country after the ruthless Imperialist French....I guess he would say we provoked the Viet Cong to take such drastic actions in 1959. Funny, I was actually at Bien Hoa and Ton Son Nhut and Da Nang and several other bases years later, and they were still acting just like they did in 1959...they sure hold a grudge, don't they......I can't imagine what is being taught in school for history nowdays...and what will be taught in the future with the current crop of "revisionists" in charge.
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